Community Based Research Toolkits

FSD International Research Interns support our community partners through Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR). CBPR is a framework or approach for conducting research that is characterized by the principles and the relationships between the communities and academic researchers. This type of research requires partnership development, cooperation and negotiation, and commitment to addressing local issues. CBPR is accomplishing objectives and development through empowerment and ownership.

In this section, you will find a few helpful toolkits that you may use while conducting research as an FSD intern. Your site team are familiar with these toolkits and will be able to help you during your time in-country, but you should familiarize yourself with these toolkits in preparation for your research.

Asset-based community development (ABCD) is a methodology or an approach towards the sustainable development of communities based on their strengths and potentials, rather than their needs. 5. People care: challenge notions of “apathy” by listening to people’s interests.Asset mappingis the general process of identifying and providing information about a community’s assets or the status, condition, behavior, knowledge, or skills that a person, group or entity possesses, which serves as a support, resource, or source of strength to one’s self and others in the community. This toolkit will help you as you begin assessing the community in which you will work.

This toolkit will help provide a guideline for research interns, site teams, partner organizations, and communities in order to create research proposals, develop research plans and project designs, and carry out the full scope of a research project in a way that supports FSD’s mission of helping to catalyze and support community-driven community-development.

Culture is part of the fabric of every society, including our own. It shapes “the way things are done” and our understanding of why this should be so. Understanding culture and learning to work in a cross-cultural environment is imperative to the success of your research an internship abroad. This toolkit will break down some of the barriers you may face as an outsider during your time abroad.

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in community-driven development (CDD) operations is crucial in order to provide information for decision-making and improve project management, to assess development effectiveness and demonstrate results, and of particular relevance in the CDD context that FSD supports, to empower communities and ensure greater transparency and accountability. Especially in the research context, it is an essential process.

Interviews are like everyday conversations that are more or less focused on the researcher’s needs for data. They differ from everyday conversations in that researchers should be more concerned to conduct interviews in a rigorous way to ensure reliability and validity of the data. Thus, findings should reflect what the research set out to answer, rather than reflecting the bias of the research or a very atypical group. The key to successful interviewing is learning how toprobe effectively and to stimulate an informant to produce more information,without injecting yourself into the interaction.Remember, the interviewer is the learner.

About FSD

FSD Jinja-Uganda provides opportunities for students and professionals to engage in structured community development work. The programs are designed to help build careers while having lasting impact on the people in the community which is served